Jim Donaldson: Valentine hardly had a chance to succeed in Boston

Thursday

The sports pendulum swings, back and forth, from one side to the other, not just constantly, but inevitably.

The sports pendulum swings, back and forth, from one side to the other, not just constantly, but inevitably.

It’s been going that way with the Patriots for years, going back to when “players’ coach” Ron Erhardt, who was considered too nice a guy, was replaced by supposed tough guy Ron Meyer.

Except that the rules and methods Meyer brought from his college job at SMU rankled many of the Pats veterans, and so he was replaced by the mellow but meticulous Raymond Berry, who led the team to its first AFC championship.

Bill Parcells was brought in to restore order and credibility to a franchise in chaos in 1992, then was followed by the unfailingly enthusiastic Pete Carroll — who failed to sustain Parcells’ run of success, after which the no-nonsense Bill Belichick arrived on the scene, ushering in the greatest era in team history.

The Celtics won a title with the fiery Bill Fitch, then two more with his successor, the laidback K.C. Jones.

As for hockey teams, well, they sometimes seem to change coaches as often as they change lines, exhibit “A” being the late Pat Burns, who was NHL coach of the year with three different teams — Toronto, Montreal and Boston — and ended his coaching career with yet another, the New Jersey Devils.

Which brings us to baseball — specifically to the Red Sox and Bobby Valentine, who on Thursday was hit by the sports pendulum square upside the noggin.

Except, in Bobby’s case, the Boston front office never let the pendulum complete its arc.

Bobby was brought in because Terry Francona, after winning a couple of World Series, had lost control of the clubhouse. Tito was perceived as being too close to the players, who were taking advantage of him by neglecting their workouts and doing such things as slipping into the clubhouse during games to eat fried chicken and drink beer.

So, even though he clearly wasn’t the first choice of first-year general manager Ben Cherington, ownership hired the opinionated Bobby V, who would speak his mind, tell the players what they needed — rather than what they wanted — to hear, and change the clubhouse karma.

Except that, when Valentine spoke out in what all but that most supersensitive of athletes – that would be coddled baseball players — would consider mild terms, it created a firestorm upon which the front office threw gasoline.

Having decided Valentine was the man for the job, Red Sox management wouldn’t back Bobby when he tried to do it his way, as was evident early in the infamous incident involving Kevin Youkilis.

Asked about Youkilis in a television interview in April, Valentine said: “"I don’t think he’s as physically or emotionally into the game as he has been in the past for some reason.”

After which, the you-know-what hit the fan.

Youkilis, rather than being inspired, was offended. And the reponse of Dustin Pedroia, the team’s gutsy, emotional leader, to Valentine’s remark was: “That’s not the way we do things here.”

That, as it turned out, was a turning point. Because the front office tacitly agreed with the players, rather than backing the manager they’d just hired. Clearly, Bobby V. was not going to be given free rein to do things his way.

We’ll never know if Bobby’s way would have been the right way.

I tend to think not, believing that he never was the right man for the job.

But, when he couldn’t do it his way, it seemed likely that he’d be hitting the highway sooner, rather than later.

It became obvious that Valentine no longer wanted the job by the way he acted, and managed, following the mega-trade of Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett, and Carl Crawford — and their mega-contracts — to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

That was a chance for Valentine to make a new beginning, a fresh start, to take the team in the direction he felt it need to go.

Instead, he went off the deep end, and the Red Sox went into the tank.

Rather than reviving his moribund ball club, Valentine appeared as if he couldn’t wait for the season to end — saying strange things and making odd managerial moves, such as sending Daniel Nava up to pinch-hit for good-field-no-hit Jose Iglesias when the rookie shortstop already had two strikes on him.

The way the season was going — rapidly downhill in an avalanche of losses — and the offhand, oddball manner Valentine was acting left the Red Sox with only one move to make: Let him go.

After what happened this dismal season — the worst year the Red Sox have had since 1965, when they were 62-100 — there was no way they could bring Bobby V. back next year.

So now the Sox are about to have their third manager in as many years.

Whoever the new guy turns out to be, here’s hoping he’s allowed to be himself, to manage his way until, sometime down the road, the sports pendulum swings back at him, as it always does, and knocks him for a loop.

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